Let structure emerge organically
Structure comes not from imposing plans from the top down, but bubbling ideas from the bottom up
Articles tagged with Entrepreneurship
A collection of articles tagged with Entrepreneurship on my blog!
You don't need authentication, just their email
A particularly good trick if you're doing school entrepreneurship
If Google Forms and Sheets are not enough, Quasar's got your back
If Google Forms and Sheets are not enough, Quasar Framework is your best bet.
I’m consistently blown away by how ergonomic and beautiful Quasar’s pre-built components are. They’re also based off the Material Design specification, which makes them very similar to Google Forms and Google Sheets.
It is much faster to build a facsimile to Google Forms with Quasar than it is to build it with TailwindCSS. And at the end of the day, you have to ship.
For startups and especially side projects, there is nothing more jank but acceptable than a Google Sheet
For a lot of use cases, a Google Sheet is all you need.
You may think that you need:
- A fancy custom user interface to gather and display user data
- A powerful SQL database to store everything
- A developer to create a custom solution for you
but often, you can use just a Google Form with a Google Sheet and it’s more than enough.
A Google Sheet includes (almost) everything you need. It includes robust methods to display your data. It comes with built-in filtering functions and sorting options. It even has Google Apps Script (shoutout to my script to copy a Supabase Table into a Google Sheet), which you could schedule like cron jobs, all without the headache of setting up cron jobs for yourselves. Many of these features are built-in, which saves you time and effort compared to creating your own table and styling it from scratch. These features truly are, for most people, good enough.
But perhaps most importantly of all, beyond features, Google Forms and Sheets are accessible. Everyone has used Google Forms and Sheets already. You do not need to worry about building your user interfaced from scratch using intuitive design principles, so that users can figure out how to use it when encountering it for the first time.
Think about all of the time wasted where people spend hours making dashboards and efficient ways to display their data. It’s already been solved before.
Do you really need to differentiate yourself through your user interface?
How do commercial licenses like Obsidian's make money? Honor system
From this Reddit comment:
It is a honour system.
Many software companies don’t get significant amounts of income from direct licencing. For example less than 10% of duolingo users pay a subscription. There are other income streams involved.
In addition the different licences protect from corporate related liabilities: “our business lost its income due to your software!” ” were you paying for the corporate package?” “Well no…”
In response to what’s the point of Obsidian offering the commercial license.
Product Market Fit
Pretentious people call it PMF. It is a concept used in business to describe the point where a product or service meets the needs and demands of its target market. It means that the product is satisfying a genuine need in the market and has achieved a level of acceptance and adoption by customers.
You should sign up for the Tsai City Newsletter
An underrated resource for trips and just fun stuff.
Reflection on my Trip to DEKA and ARMI in New Hampshire
A fantastic trip, perhaps lifechanging trip with BENG 404 at Yale
Design your website to be mobile first
It's way easier to go from mobile to desktop than the other way around
Let structure emerge organically
Structure comes not from imposing plans from the top down, but bubbling ideas from the bottom up
Reflection on my Trip to DEKA and ARMI in New Hampshire
A fantastic trip, perhaps lifechanging trip with BENG 404 at Yale
You should sign up for the Tsai City Newsletter
An underrated resource for trips and just fun stuff.
For startups and especially side projects, there is nothing more jank but acceptable than a Google Sheet
For a lot of use cases, a Google Sheet is all you need.
You may think that you need:
- A fancy custom user interface to gather and display user data
- A powerful SQL database to store everything
- A developer to create a custom solution for you
but often, you can use just a Google Form with a Google Sheet and it’s more than enough.
A Google Sheet includes (almost) everything you need. It includes robust methods to display your data. It comes with built-in filtering functions and sorting options. It even has Google Apps Script (shoutout to my script to copy a Supabase Table into a Google Sheet), which you could schedule like cron jobs, all without the headache of setting up cron jobs for yourselves. Many of these features are built-in, which saves you time and effort compared to creating your own table and styling it from scratch. These features truly are, for most people, good enough.
But perhaps most importantly of all, beyond features, Google Forms and Sheets are accessible. Everyone has used Google Forms and Sheets already. You do not need to worry about building your user interfaced from scratch using intuitive design principles, so that users can figure out how to use it when encountering it for the first time.
Think about all of the time wasted where people spend hours making dashboards and efficient ways to display their data. It’s already been solved before.
Do you really need to differentiate yourself through your user interface?
Design your website to be mobile first
It's way easier to go from mobile to desktop than the other way around
Product Market Fit
Pretentious people call it PMF. It is a concept used in business to describe the point where a product or service meets the needs and demands of its target market. It means that the product is satisfying a genuine need in the market and has achieved a level of acceptance and adoption by customers.
How do commercial licenses like Obsidian's make money? Honor system
From this Reddit comment:
It is a honour system.
Many software companies don’t get significant amounts of income from direct licencing. For example less than 10% of duolingo users pay a subscription. There are other income streams involved.
In addition the different licences protect from corporate related liabilities: “our business lost its income due to your software!” ” were you paying for the corporate package?” “Well no…”
In response to what’s the point of Obsidian offering the commercial license.
You don't need authentication, just their email
A particularly good trick if you're doing school entrepreneurship
If Google Forms and Sheets are not enough, Quasar's got your back
If Google Forms and Sheets are not enough, Quasar Framework is your best bet.
I’m consistently blown away by how ergonomic and beautiful Quasar’s pre-built components are. They’re also based off the Material Design specification, which makes them very similar to Google Forms and Google Sheets.
It is much faster to build a facsimile to Google Forms with Quasar than it is to build it with TailwindCSS. And at the end of the day, you have to ship.